Robert Anton Wilson loved Welles work, particularly "F Is For Fake." Excerpt from the New Yorker article, Welles talking about "F Is For Fake":

The tragedy of my life is that I can’t get the Americans to like it…. Anyway, I think, “F for Fake” is the only really original movie I’ve made since “Kane.” You see, everything else is only carrying movies a little further along the same path. I believe that the movies—I’ll say a terrible thing—have never gone beyond “Kane.” That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been good movies, or great movies. But everything has been done now in movies, to the point of fatigue. You can do it better, but it’s always gonna be the same grammar, you know? Every artistic form—the blank-verse drama, the Greek plays, the novel—has only so many possibilities and only so long a life. And I have a feeling that in movies, until we break completely, we are only increasing the library of good works. I know that as a director of movie actors in front of the camera, I have nowhere to move forward. I can only make another good work.

And here is a transcript of one of the conversations. Very gossipy. Excerpt:

Richard Burton comes to the table.Richard Burton: Orson, how good to see you. It’s been too long. You’re looking fine. Elizabeth is with me. She so much wants to meet you. Can I bring her over to your table?O.W.: No. As you can see, I’m in the middle of my lunch. I’ll stop by on my way out.Burton exits.H.J.: Orson, you’re behaving like an asshole. That was so rude.
I also liked the conspiracy theory Welles offered about Carole Lombard's plane being shot down by Nazi agents.

I've seen F Is For Fake a couple of times and thought it clever but in no way an advance on "Kane." But I'm always willing to watch it again, and if you're into Amazon Streaming Video you can, for $2.99 3-day rental, watch it too:http://preview.tinyurl.com/l3jo8en

RAW made comments - sometimes extensive ones - on every Welles project that I know of (except the hundreds of films and commercials OW did to make money to finish his latest film). RAW seemed fascinated by OW for not only being a multi-perspectival proto-postmodern "who knows what the truth really 'is'?" artist, but the psychedelic nature of his visual style (see the essay on "Touch of Evil" and cannabis in CT3 and/or the observations on the psychedelic ending of Lady From Shanghai in CT2, p.117), and for Welles's magickal workings. (Note RAW's admiration for Welles's boy-genius radio prank.)

Also: Welles seems to represent yet another character that Pound cared about: the great artist who works under the plight of what Bucky Fuller called LAWCAP, or lawyer-run capitalism.

When RAW met Arlen she was writing radio scripts for "The Lives of Harry Lime."

Odd note: not long ago I watched a Charlie Rose interview with James Watson, co-discoverer of the helical structure of DNA, and he said his father's uncle helped raise Welles.

There's a DVD out where a guy interviews Welles for about an hour in his Paris hotel room, and I find it difficult to not think, "This guy is a staggering genius." But he was probably pretty difficult and downright assholic at other times. Guys like Bogdanovich could tell ya stories...

I have yet to see Southern Star and Olga the Ostrich; somehow RAW got hold of a (probably duped copy?) and watched it very stoned late in his life.

BTW, has any other film director become a character in another director's films? How many times has "Orson Welles" (played by another actor) been a character in somebody else's movie? Look at this list:http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0026779/?ref_=fn_ch_ch_1

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A daily posting from Tom Jackson about my favorite writer, Robert Anton Wilson. I also seek material by or about Robert Shea, Mr. Wilson's collaborator in writing "Illuminatus!" If you have tips, you may write me at tom.jackson@gmail.com. Please put "Robert Anton Wilson" in the subject line.